Jill Biden‘s flippant comment that NCAA women’s basketball championship runners-up Iowa should accompany winners LSU to the White House is a rare misstep by the first lady but one that follows in the footsteps of some of her predecessors.
Although first spouses tend to be more popular than their partners in their equal parts policy and public relations role, they are not immune to making mistakes.
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Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley criticized Biden’s “play” for Iowa as “crass and transparent,” though Democrats have reordered their 2024 presidential nominating calendar.
“Ask yourself, would she have done so for Hawaii if they were the runner-up?” the Republican strategist asked.
Praising former first ladies Jackie Onassis and Nancy Reagan, Shirley scrutinized former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln as the “worst,” particularly “her profligate spending, pro-slavery sentiments, and public and embarrassing displays.”
“Eleanor Roosevelt was both beloved and hated,” he said of the first lady whose early support of civil rights jeopardized the New Deal. “When she died, Bill Buckley quipped about her funeral, ‘Some came to mourn, some came to celebrate, and some came to make sure.’ I come down on the side of admiring. Mrs. Roosevelt put up with a lot and she did a lot too.”
Historian David Pietrusza provided a more recent example, referring to former first lady Michelle Obama telling a crowd in Milwaukee in the winter of 2008 her husband’s political rise had made her “proud” of her country “for the first time in [her] adult life.”
“Lou Hoover’s actions regarding an invitation to a 1929 White House tea to the wife of the nation’s first black congressman in decades infuriated much of the Southern congressional delegation,” Pietrusza said. “It was a bit akin to Theodore Roosevelt’s earlier dining with Booker T. Washington.”
“The case of Rachel Jackson is an odd one,” he added. “She never lived to see her husband Andrew serve as president. But the circumstances of her first marriage and whether she was properly divorced or not always hung over the Jacksons and fueled rumors of her adultery with him.
The White House was pushed on the LSU controversy Thursday after shooting guard Angel Reese, named the tournament’s most outstanding player, declined Biden’s invitation and apology, proposing that her team should visit former President Barack Obama and his wife instead.
“The first lady was honored to attend the championship game,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “Again, a great game and a wonderful moment for women’s sports in history, something both the first lady and the president have talked about. … And I’ll say again, she and the president are truly looking forward to welcoming the LSU Tigers here to celebrate them.”
The basketball bungle is not the first time Biden has dropped the political ball after her former communications director had to express regret over the first lady telling the UnidosUS 2022 Annual Conference last summer in San Antonio that the Latino and Hispanic community is “as unique as the breakfast tacos.”
“The first lady apologizes that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community,” Michael LaRosa tweeted of her prepared remarks.
Doug Emhoff also found himself in political hot water last fall after reports he had implored Democrats to rally around his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, if Biden does not seek reelection, a move that prompted “eye-rolling” in the White House, according to Politico. Biden reportedly additionally became “annoyed” after hearing Emhoff had complained about Harris’s complicated portfolio, which includes the root causes of irregular migration and voting rights.
“He hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president,” Chris Whipple wrote in his book, The Fight of His Life.
Writer Kate Andersen Brower underscored the difference between being the president’s spouse and the vice president’s partner.
“In some ways, being the first second gentleman is a challenge because it’s important that he show his support and real contentment with giving up his big career and working to help her get her message across,” the author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies said. “Being the silent partner can be the hardest assignment of all.”
Here are two other instances in which a White House spouse has caused a political headache for their partner:
Former first lady Melania Trump and that jacket
Former first lady Melania Trump set social media alight when she boarded Air Force Two in the summer of 2018 wearing a $39 green Zara rain jacket with white graffiti on the back that read, “I Really Don’t Care Do U.” Her trip was to McAllen, Texas, a border community, which, at the time, was under pressure from her husband’s migrant family separation crisis. Her visit included a tour of a detention center.
The first lady’s husband, former President Donald Trump, tweeted his wife’s jacket was for “the Fake News Media.”
“Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!” he wrote.
Melania Trump later told ABC News, “It was for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticizing me.”
“I want to show them I don’t care,” she said. “You could criticize whatever you want to say. But it will not stop me to do what I feel is right.”
Former first lady Michelle Obama and that hug
Michelle Obama created an international incident when she broke royal protocol and hugged the late Queen Elizabeth II in the summer of 2009 during her and her husband’s state visit. Etiquette dictates no one should touch a member of the royal family unless they initiate contact.
The former first lady reflected on her faux pas in her 2020 memoir, Becoming, describing the pair as being “two tired ladies oppressed by our shoes” and her response as “instinctive.”
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“The Queen glanced down at the pair of black Jimmy Choos I was wearing. She shook her head. ‘These shoes are unpleasant, are they not?’ she said. She gestured with some frustration at her own black pumps. I confessed then to the Queen that my feet were hurting. She confessed that hers hurt, too,” Michelle Obama wrote.
“If I hadn’t done the proper thing at Buckingham Palace, I had at least done the human thing,” she continued. “I daresay the Queen was OK with it too, because when I touched her, she pulled closer, resting a gloved hand lightly on the small of my back.”
